When the Tolliver family was homeless, Monica "Nelly" Tolliver (pictured) would ask: "Why are we sleeping in the car. We don't have a house – are we homeless?" In July, she helped decorate her Costa Mesa living room with hand-drawn cards to thank Lindah Miles for rescuing her family. Nelly calls Lindah her "Angel."

Richard Tolliver, 12, reads a letter his brother Abraham wrote to Lindah Miles (center) holding Richard's nephew Darren, 1. In the letter, Abraham thanked his "auntie" Lindah for looking after his family. "It's like the Academy Awards for me here," said Lindah. "It's the best, best, best. Oh my gosh, I love the art work."

Monica "Nelly" Tolliver, 7, next to the artwork she drew to thank Lindah Miles for taking her family off the streets of Orange County. The drawing depicts Nelly alongside Miles' triplets.

Monica Tolliver makes her way to the car to take Gil Tolliver to work at Walmart. Monica used read Better Homes and Gardens magazine, dreaming of the day she'd have a home once again. The Tolliver family would drive through neighborhoods in Los Alamitos and Monica's children would point to a house and say "We like that house," or "We want that one."

Abraham Tolliver shows off his favorite football card and his favorite team, the San Diego Chargers.

Richard Tolliver kisses his nephew Elijah. "Richard always thinks about everybody else," says Lindah Miles. "He's a good older brother, and now I see him giving back. He helps me every month to serve the homeless."

Gil Tolliver gets ready for work while his son Richard Tolliver cares for his nephew Elijah Tolliver.

Gil Tolliver lifts his daughter Monica to look for a prized possession she keeps on top of a cabinet in the living room of the family's new home.

Abraham Tolliver displays some of his prized football card collection in the bedroom that has two bunk-beds and crib.

The Tollivers, Monica "Nelly", Gil Sr. and Abraham with grandson Elijah lagging behind, start heading for the front door as they get ready to take Gil Tolliver to work.

Abraham Tolliver plays catch in the backyard of his Costa Mesa home with his dad, Gil Tolliver. Lindah Miles recently paid the fees so that Abraham and brother Richard can play Pop Warner football in Costa Mesa this fall. When the family was homeless, Abraham and Richard tried out for an Anaheim soccer league, but without a home address couldn't sign up for the team. At the time, the family also couldn't afford to pay the fees for the boys to play.

Monica Tolliver gives her husband Gil Tolliver a hug after dropping him off for work at a Wal-Mart in Orange recently.

As their children slept in the back seats of their dark blue Yukon SUV, Monica and Gil Tolliver would talk until late in the night, too anxious to sleep.

Their infant grandson, Elijah, slept on the car’s console, surrounded by a nest of pillows and blankets. In the back seats were the couple’s four children. In the trunk, the family’s clothes were stacked; on the floor, their shoes were lined up.

The Tollivers washed in bathrooms at gas stations and parks. They ate food purchased with money given to them by strangers.

Gil, a former construction worker, wondered how he was going to find a job, and, if he found one, how he’d have to leave his family alone on the streets while he was working.

Monica wondered if they would ever find shelter. Every day she waited for the sun to go down, hoping that their situation would change.

“We always felt… we live every day, but we hope for tomorrow,” Monica says.

“But tomorrow would come and it was just the same thing.”

Monica’s memories of that period, beginning in the spring of 2006, when a real estate deal gone bad drained the family’s savings and pushed them to the streets, are any parent’s nightmare.

Their youngest, Nelly, then 5, would ask: “Are we going to have a bed tonight or is it going to be the car again?” And their boys, Gil Jr. and Richard, would muffle their cries in the backseat as they tried to fall asleep without knowing when they’d eat again or when they might return to school.

ast week, as we sat in the parking lot of a Walmart in Orange, tears spilled down Monica’s cheeks as she recounted her story. Among the details: The family had slept in this very parking lot. In fact, the Tollivers spent many nights in Walmart parking lots across Orange County.

They say Walmart was a safe haven, a place where they and other homeless families could park their cars at night without being hassled.

And on those sleepless nights, under the glow of the parking lot’s lamps, Monica would tell Gil that if she ever got rich she would give back to Walmart.

“I told Gil: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could ever get a job there.’ Monica says.

“But we never thought in a million years that he would.”

•••

For more than a year now, I’ve been tracking families who have fallen on hard times, whether it was due to job loss, foreclosed homes, bad luck, poor health or the myriad of problems facing many Americans these days. With our state in financial turmoil, many of the needy are being overlooked.

The Tolllivers, however, were not forgotten.

It took two years, but fate led them to a Costa Mesa motel in July, 2008, where homeless activist Lindah Miles of Newport Beach was feeding the needy through an on-site church Bible program. She spotted Nelly, then 5, sitting on a staircase holding her nephew Elijah in her arms.

Miles immediately placed the family in a motel, then a Residence Inn, an extended stay hotel. It was a turning point for Gil who recalls how Lindah’s husband, Doug Miles, an attorney, helped the Tollivers move their bags of clothes into the hotel.

“When we first walked through the door and I was just looking, he put his arm around me and said ‘Everything is going to be all right, Gil.”

For a family that spent cold nights with their car windows rolled up to keep the wintry air out, it was hard for them to imagine that things would turn out all right. But when Lindah leased the Tollivers a home in Costa Mesa, they saw hope.

And Gil remembered Doug’s words this past February when, after months of searching for a job and sending out his resume, he finally landed a job – unloading merchandise at the Walmart in Orange where his family had once parked their SUV.

“I felt like it was a new start for me, to give back,” says Gil, 39.

“…As a father and a husband you want to take care of your family. But if you don’t have a job, you can’t take care of them.”

•••

True to their word, the Tollivers now spend much of their time giving back. They help Lindah feed the homeless at a Costa Mesa church. At school, last fall, Richard, 12, and Gil Jr., 14, befriended a homeless boy. They gave him a bag of their own clothes, a pair of shoes, and, when they realized he had nothing to eat, they gave him Gil Jr.’s lunch money.

Last week, as they waited for Gil Sr.’s lunch break at Walmart, Monica says a homeless woman walked by their car asking for $9 to rent a motel room. The children immediately began digging through the car’s seats for change.

“So even though we went through that (period of homelessness) I see that my kids have hearts for the homeless,” says Monica, who still returns to Walmarts on weekends to search for her homeless “neighbors” who used to park nearby.

Still, Monica says, it takes time to heal.

At the end of last month, to mark the one-year-anniversary of moving off the streets of Orange County, the Tolliver children surprised Lindah with a cake and handmade thank you cards that they taped throughout their living room. Their words revealed how far they had come. Nelly, now 7, drew a picture of herself in a bathtub and wrote: “Because of you I don’t have to take wash ups in the parks. I can relax and take a hot bubble bath.”

Another card from Gil Jr. had two scenes: In the first he wrote “Nobody cared. Broken heart” and colored a heart torn in two. Next to it, he colored a second scene and wrote “But you did! Super Heart” and colored a glowing red heart with a happy face.

The sentiments were a world away from the words Gil Jr. wrote to Lindah in a letter she now keeps in her Bible:

“I thought there was no hope of living in this world. Then God told me there’s a reason why he put me on this earth. That’s why I’m still living, and I’m thankful because a family of Angels rescued me.”

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